The man from the Congo came to Dr. Silvia Diego's Modesto clinic with seemingly straightforward symptoms: a fever, a cough. But what appeared to be a simple pneumonia did not ease as quickly as it should, and soon the man was on a hospital...

The medical school would rise like a mirage from the cow pastures and almond groves of Merced County. It would be powered by one of the world's great research universities to serve one of the most doctor-poor regions in the state.